A blade-based system (system) may employ a plurality of server blades (blades) arranged in a common chassis to deliver high-density computing functionality. This common chassis may include one or more common sub-systems such as power sources comprising one or more power modules, or I/O sources comprising multiple networking modules. A fully configured blade may have several optional components, including but not limited to hard drives, memory, daughter cards, etc. The power needs of these components may significantly increase the power requirements of a base blade. Systems must ensure that there are sufficient resources, prior to a blade powering on, to prevent overtaxing the system resources and possibly causing a failure of one or more sub-systems. A system further includes a chassis management processor, which monitors resources and controls operation of the blades. Since a blade may contain optional components, the chassis management processor assumes a ‘worst case’ scenario (max power) for a blade when determining if the blade may safely power on. If there are insufficient resources to accommodate the worst case scenario, then a blade may not be permitted to power on, even if the actual power requirements of the blade could be accommodated. This results in a waste of system resources as the system may be underutilized. Thus, a power management system that operates on the assumption of a max power configuration would be artificially and needlessly constrained. More sophisticated systems and methods based on predicting the actual power requirements of the blade will help minimized underutilization in power management systems.